Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 5th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, as a former Chief Whip, I am pleased to follow the convention of congratulating my noble friend Lord Hart on his maiden speech. He has demonstrated his long experience of the countryside and rural affairs, and the House will look forward to his future contributions.

The House may be relieved to know that I do not have an old MAFF t-shirt on dogs worrying sheep. However, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Coffey on her persistence as a leading advocate of this Bill in the Commons and on now piloting it through this House. There is not much I need to say, since she has clearly set out its excellent provisions, and the Official Opposition are pleased to support it. I hope that we can get it on to the statute book as soon as possible.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Trees, I looked at the National Sheep Association’s 2023 survey, the eighth that it has conducted since 2013. There were 305 respondents, or 79% of NSA members. Some 70% of respondents had a sheep worrying incident, with 95% of them involving between one and 10 sheep. In almost 70% of cases, a single dog has injured or killed multiple sheep. Respondents still have severe concerns around education and irresponsible dog ownership, and only 14% were alerted by the offending dog owner, with the majority left to discover the evidence later.

It is right to make a separate offence of attacking animals, as opposed to worrying animals. I often think that the term “worrying” plays down the terrible damage that dogs can do to sheep, especially pregnant ewes, by chasing them round a field and causing their lambs, as well as the ewe herself, to die. A dog does not have to land a bite or make a physical attack on a sheep to kill it. There will be those letting their dogs run wild in a field who do not care what damage they do, but I suspect that many simply do not realise that their dog or dogs chasing sheep can result in the sheep’s deaths.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Trees, I will mention “One Man and his Dog”. I wonder sometimes whether ignorant townies have seen the sheepdogs herding sheep and thought that it was okay for their dogs to chase sheep around too. I say “ignorant townies” because of an occasion many years ago when I attended a young farmers’ open day held in the city of Carlisle, which my rural constituency surrounded. The idea was that the young farmers would take a bit of the countryside into the city and let townies see what they did. One demonstration was sheep shearing. I was standing beside a couple, when a child, aged about 12 or 13, said, “Mummy, mummy, look at that awful man cutting all the hair of that poor beast”. “Yes,” she replied, “It’s disgusting. Don’t look. Let’s go”. For a garrulous politician, I was absolutely speechless; I could not believe the complete disconnect between town and country and that level of ignorance. It may be similar ignorance among non-country people that means they do not see the dangers of letting their dogs run wild in a field of animals—or of lighting disgusting disposable BBQs that they then leave behind, if they have not already set the place on fire.

I note that the Bill now includes all camelids. I have seen herds of llamas and alpacas in east Cumbria and around Penrith, but perhaps over in west Cumbria the Minister has dromedary and Bactrian camels too. I think they would make short shrift of any dogs trying to attack them.

Although the Bill is excellent, I worry about enforcement; other noble Lords have commented on this. The police—even rural police forces—may not give it the effort it deserves, then the CPS may not bother prosecuting and the fines may end up being derisory.

Taking the police first, I worry that the culprits will be long gone before a constable turns up to seize the dog. The National Sheep Association survey showed that 84% of farmers found out about an attack and a dead sheep much later. Even if the police turn up when the attack or worrying is in progress, the decision may be that, without a full risk assessment and protective clothing, as well as other health and safety concerns, they cannot intervene. If there are recorded cases of the police not jumping into a pond to save a drowning child, they might never intervene to seize an attacking dog.

There are countless cases of the police failing to attend a burglary. In 2022-23, the average police response time for a burglary in England and Wales was nine hours and eight minutes. Some rural forces had some of the worst times: in Northamptonshire, it was 28 hours and two minutes; in Durham, it was 26 hours; in South Yorkshire, which is big sheep country, it was 12 hours and 47 minutes; while Cumbria was one of the fastest, at a little over an hour. Without labouring it further, my point is that if the police fail to turn up expeditiously for burglaries, there is little hope of them rushing out to sheep worrying attacks.

Yes, taking samples is an excellent innovation, but I did a Google search this week and found that the cost of a court-admissible DNA test is between £300 and £400. Let me be clear: I am not criticising the Bill—it is an excellent Bill—but I urge the Minister to write to all rural forces after the Bill becomes law to stress to them that they must enforce the provisions in Clauses 2 and 3 on investigating, taking samples, seizing dogs and making the owners pay. I want her to stress that the police must take this seriously; possibly of even more importance, so must the courts.

The current law is a level 3 fine, which goes up to £1,000, which may be a fraction of the cost of the killed sheep. The Bill states simply that it shall be a fine, with no level attached. In theory, that could be an unlimited fine, with which most of us here—everyone in this House, I think—would agree, but who will determine the level? I am afraid that it may be the discredited Sentencing Council. Parliament has already had to intervene in the past few months to pass a law to stop the council undermining the laws we have passed with some of its laughable sentencing guidelines. The Justice Secretary announced this week that the Government will take a power to overrule its sentencing guidelines. Why stop there? Tony Blair created this anti-democratic organisation, so it should be abolished—but that is a separate debate.

I have been in Parliament for 42 years. Almost every single year, under every Government, we have voted through tougher sentences for a whole range of crimes but then, behind our backs, the Sentencing Council has made sentencing recommendations that give the maximum sentence only in very rare cases. So I welcome the fact that, in this Bill, we have the possibility of large fines. However, I am afraid that the courts may be advised to make derisory penalties, as urban-based judges and council members may have no real appreciation of the damage caused in the countryside. Again, I urge the Minister to get her officials to look at any guidance produced in future by the Sentencing Council and, if it seems to undermine what we in this Chamber today are expecting from this Bill, to notify the Justice Secretary and get it overruled.

I repeat: this is an excellent Bill. The contents are right, and I hope that it becomes law as soon as possible. As the Minister—the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock—said in her winding-up speech in our debate on the previous Bill, any new legislation is only as good as the enforcement of it. This Bill must be enforced by the police, the CPS and the courts. I want assurances from the Minister that she will—pardon the pun—doggedly hound those bodies to ensure that they do what we in Parliament have mandated.